When a girlfriend rang at nine o’clock one morning to ask if we were still considering having another dog I quickly answered ‘Yes’ but then a reticent ‘Why?’ When we first broached the idea of a move to the country with the children, I shamefully resorted to the oldest trick in the book - bribery. It always worked before in encouraging them to eat their greens so has been a firm favourite ever since. 'Of course we can have another dog,’ I gaily agreed to their pleads. ‘The new house will have a much bigger garden than the one we have here and there will be plenty of fields and woods to walk it in.’ At that stage I would have agreed to adopting an elephant if they so desired to win them round. What they didn’t know was whilst they might have visions of another Lhasa Apso, I secretly had my heart set on a brown Labrador. The voice on the other end of the phone continued. ‘Well, if you are serious you have to come and get the puppy today.’ ‘Why the urgency?’ I probed. What was the matter with it? The runt of the litter, infested with fleas, found wandering the streets late at night? Was this going to be a decision I would regret? ‘Because the mother has just been run over and there are five puppies that are ten days old.’ I didn’t hesitate. ‘We’ll be up as soon as possible.’ Then a thought struck me. I looked at our Lhasa Apso ready to leap at the letter box as the postman popped the letters though. ‘Any chance of a bitch as I don’t think Alfie would take kindly to another alpha male in the house?' With my head engaged instead of my heart, I probed a little deeper. No one in their right mind would risk adopting without knowing background information surely? Apparently the puppies’ mother, a farm black and white Collie, had ambitions above her station and had an illicit liaison with a very handsome visiting, pedigree, brown Labrador resulting in a litter of pups. That morning only two hours previously, a lorry had squashed her under its tyres. Now the owner of the Collie was desperately trying to find homes for four of the puppies knowing she couldn’t hand rear them all herself. My mind switch to organizational mode. I rang my daughter on her way home from college. ‘Stop off at Boots and pick up some baby bottles, teats and sterizing tablets,’ I urged. ‘Mum! You can’t be having a baby that quickly!’ she exclaimed. She needed no encouragement when I explained that her mother hadn’t rashly decided to foster a baby, nor suddenly lost all her teeth needing to bottle feed her food intake. She offered to accompany me to collect the new member of the family. I rushed out to the local pet store to buy some puppy weaning milk (did youknow there was such a thing?) And we were ready! Driving up to the farm about an hour away, I briefed my daughter. ‘We mustn’t get too attached. The puppy is so young it probably won’t survive.’ I’m not a pessimist, just didn’t want to add floods of tears to the equation when our best efforts at rescuing went amiss. We arrived and drove into the yard. A small crowd gathered around the litter lying in the straw in one of the outbuildings. ‘Hello,’ I said to the woman standing in the centre who looked as though she knew what she was doing. ‘I understand you have a puppy for me.' With that she plucked a tiny no-bigger-than-the-size-of-my-hand ball of black fur from the straw and gave it to me. And that was it! We drove away with the puppy nestling in my daughter’s lap. No cloth smelling of her mother. No food or drink ready to give it and no idea of what to do next. The puppy’s eyes were still closed and it whined softly. I looked at it. ‘She’s so cute,’ my daughter cooed. ‘It’s black! And a Collie!’ I stated the obvious. ‘I wanted a brown Labrador.’ ‘MUM!’ How can you be so heartless?’ I was chastised. ‘She needs us.’ If I though my bottle feeding days were over, I was wrong. The puppy was so hungry by the time we got home ten hours after it had last been fed, she sucked up so much milk I thought her stomach would burst. Bedtime came. A cardboard box had been prepared with daughter No.2’s donated, soft toy dog for the puppy to snuggle into with a hot water bottle placed under a blanket for a base. Daughter No.1 offered to take the first shift. The box was placed next to her bed. If ever the authorities want to put teenagers off from having sex I recommend giving them a ten day old puppy to care for. At 1am I crept into her bedroom. ‘Mum, please take her I can’t sleep. She won’t stop whining and I’ve got to get up for college in the morning,’ my bleary eyed child pleaded. Bisou (french for kiss) is now 5 years old. She can still sometimes bark at other dogs when on a walk but is adorable in the house and greets each of us as though we are her long lost litter, sometimes peeing herself in her excitement whenever we return home. She endears herself to others as, just like the dog in Dr Doolittle, she will plead with you to throw her ball and will retrieve it until youare exhausted. I can’t say it was all plain sailing. I nearly gave her her marching orders when she was younger. Her constant pulling on the lead nearly took my arm with it and we had to call in a dog whisperer in an effort to get her over her distrust of strangers. She still can’t cope with going into towns as any unexpected noises sends her into a panic but we are lucky to live near fields and woods which she enjoys. Although I love her to bits I would hesitate next time a girlfriend rings and asks me if I want to rescue another dog – I may no longer be a teenager needing to be made aware of the consequences of sex but do I really want the night shift again?Teresa x

PS. I've since heard that Bisou is the only one of the litter left. Although the other four survived their traumatic start in life each has come to a sticky end since.